Welcome to the home page of poet MICHAEL KESHIGIAN, author of nine poetry chapbooks and collections, including Dark Edges, recently released by Flutter Press and Eagle's Perch from Bellowing Ark Press, a book of poems with observations and experiences concerning the Lakes Region in New Hampshire. His writing has appeared in numerous national and international journals as well as many online publications. He has been the feature poet in The Aurorean, Poetree Magazine, Bellowing Ark, The Illogical Muse, The Westward QuarterlyPegasus Review, Boston Literary Magazine,Chantarelle’s Notebook, Red River Review, Illya's Honey and Reader’s Choice in the Fairfield Review. He is a 5-time Pushcart Prize and 2-time Best Of The Net nominee.

Legacy

Town of his birth,he is rushing back

to the house of his infant years,

escaping throngs of cars and frenzied employees

that clutter city sidewalks,

searching with his headlights bright

for the narrow country roads

that lead to the place

of his grandfather’s voluntary exile.

To the chagrin of co-workers and bosses,

he is consumed, a knight,

galloping backward in time

toward the black and white world of family history

to save the home

and the barely valuable heirlooms of his predecessors,

significant only in longevity and the decades of old fingerprints

that might have survived,

family portraits, antique bedrooms,

the grand piano he never learned how to play.

Tonight, within the seclusion of secrets and memories,

he will clean and pamper them,

listen to all their stories,

and accept them again as house guests,

at least for another lifetime.

In these poems, Michael Keshigian offers insight into what we witness and/or endure in life, dark edges of stress, loss, or trauma and the questions those events raise which are difficult to comprehend or answer, making us, at times retreat into the world of dreams and imagination for the sake of solace or self preservation.

Sandy BenitezEditor, Flutter Press

With rich and visual language, the first lines from a piece of Michael Keshigian’s poetry transport the reader into the poem. One sees the lakeshore he describes or is engulfed by the forest in which he wanders, all while the character and his essence develops in just a few lines. Michael Keshigian demonstrates that poetry can be complex without being obscure.

Roy Dorman,

Submissions Editor, Lake City Lights

Michael Keshigian has a gifted pen, and a

command of instantly evocative imagery with unexpected words, just my thimble of thallium.

Philip Vermaas,

Editor, Misfits Miscellany

Blue

There is the ample door
to heaven
we anticipate to pass through
after a lifetime of good
and there is the blue heron
that bathes and stalks
a secluded pond
for sanctuary.

Mr. Keshigian offers us, in Eagle's Perch, a fresh, penetrating insight into the conflux of
mind and nature; his observations reify old themes, making the tarnished bright again.
The morning call of a loon, the brush of wind across a field, all come again new,
reimagined for us, in fresh, spare language. No ornate circumlocutions here, rather
the direct open diction one finds in the best of the Russian lyric poets. By examining
the local, the personal, he calls up the underlying general truths; all in all,
a very satisfying collection of poems."